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The Paris Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget

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The Paris Air and Space Museum is located at Le Bourget Airport. In 1973, it was decided to relocate aeronautic and space travel collections to Le Bourget after the Roissy/Charles de Gaulle Airport, the largest airport near Paris, was commissioned. In 1983, the museum was opened on the basis of these collections.

The Paris Air and Space Museum has state status and is administered by the French Ministry of Defence and Veterans Affairs. Its collections are dedicated to the history of world civilian and military aviation and space exploration, as well as the history of Le Bourget Airport. The expositions are located at a former air terminal not far from a defunct 130,000 sq. m. military air base. They cover an area of 125,000 square metres. In all, the museum has over 19,500 exhibits and documents.

The Museum also features several Russian exhibits, including a 1934 Polikarpov I-153 Chaika aircraft, seized by German forces in 1941, a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 Flogger fighter, a full-size model of the first Soviet Lunokhod lunar roving vehicle, launched in 1970, a 1981 Soyuz T-6 spacecraft command module, and an Orlan-DMA suit for performing space walks.

The museum's current director, Gerard Feldzer, a former Air France pilot, is descended from a Russian-German family that had emigrated from Kiev to France. Monsieur Feldzer knows Russia well and is interested in Russian culture. His uncle, Konstantin Feldzer, served as a pilot with the famous Normandie-Niemen Regiment in WWII.

The museum participated in the June 2005 anniversary celebrations held for Russian and French veterans at Le Bourget Airport to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the return of French pilots from the Normandie-Niemen Regiment to France. A Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter flown by the Normandie-Niemen Regiment is the centerpiece of an exhibit dedicated to World War II aircraft.